Katz on the Regulative Function of Property Rights

Larrisa Katz (Queens U.) has posted The Regulative Function of Property Rights, 8 ECON J. Watch 236 (2011).  By looking at analogous regulatory responses to private ownership, this brief essay provides a concise and unique comparison of the dominant models of property rights ("bundle of sticks" and exclusion a/k/a "stick") with her own model based on the owner's entitlement to set the agenda for a resource.  Here's the abstract:

In this paper, I examine three different models of how we manage our common resources through a system of private property rights. One model (the exclusion approach) is to control owners’ decisions indirectly, through markets. Another model (the bundle-of-rights approach) is to regulate owners’ decisions directly, by setting out specifically what they can or cannot do. These first two models have in common their focus on the substantive decisions that owners make. There is a third approach that emerges from my own account of ownership as a position of exclusive agenda-setting authority. A distinguishing feature of this model is that it restricts the class of question that the owner may consider when dealing with the thing rather than the substantive answers that owners come up with.

Jim K.